Kovacevic on Geopoliticshttps://geopoliticskovacevic.blogactiv.eu
Geopolitical author, global justice advocate and university professor Filip Kovacevic writes on the current geopolitical situation in Europe and beyond with the special focus on the intelligence and military matters.Mon, 20 Mar 2017 06:15:57 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.1Edward Snowden and the Rise of a Multipolar Worldhttps://geopoliticskovacevic.blogactiv.eu/2017/03/20/edward-snowden-and-the-rise-of-a-multipolar-world/
Mon, 20 Mar 2017 06:15:57 +0000http://geopoliticskovacevic.blogactiv.eu/?p=202» read more]]>There are many who may have already forgotten all about Edward Snowden. However, last year’s movie “Snowden,” directed by one of the best-known Hollywood film directors Oliver Stone, and the recently published book “How America Lost Its Secrets: Edward Snowden, the Man and the Theft” by a veteran U.S. investigator of intelligence matters, professor Edward Jay Epstein, brought the major elements of his life story back into the public eye.

For Oliver Stone as well as for many other American intellectuals, Edward Snowden is the prototypical hero, an individual who, in defense of basic human rights of all, fearlessly confronted the bureaucratic intelligence Leviathan, which has ubiquitously sought to exercise surveillance and control over the most private aspects of the lives of ordinary citizens. Snowden leaked to the journalists Laura Poitras, Glenn Greenwald, and Barton Gellman incontrovertible evidence that the U.S. Agency for National Security (NSA), whose very existence was for years publicly denied, had the capability to record and store all telephone and internet communications in the world, whether or not these communications involved the U.S. or non-U.S. citizens. This was the essence of the infamous program PRISM. And, in addition, Snowden’s documents demonstrated that, through the decisions of the so-called FISA courts, the NSA forced major U.S. phone service providers to turn over to it the listings of their customers’ phone calls.

However, as Epstein’s book carefully documents, Snowden is not unambiguously a heroic whistler-blower as he is being portrayed by Stone and others. His story is much more complex and mysterious.

First of all, as the subsequent U.S. intelligence community investigations determined, Snowden took with himself about 1.5 million documents, whereas he leaked to the journalists only 58.000. What happened to the rest of documents? According to Epstein, the vast majority of the documents had nothing to do with the NSA programs on the surveillance of U.S. citizens, but concerned the secret foreign operations, the sources and methods, not only of the “queen of the U.S. intelligence,” the NSA, but also of the CIA, FBI, DIA, and the rest of 17 U.S. intelligence services.

Secondly, as Epstein quite convincingly demonstrates in his book, “somebody” assisted Snowden to get on the Aeroflot [Russian state-owned airline] flight from Hong Kong to Moscow, even though he had neither a valid passport nor a mandatory Russian visa. Several months later, the Russian president Vladimir Putin publicly stated that he gave the permission for Snowden to come to Russia, where he later received a political asylum and where he lives and works at this time. Did Putin do this because he was concerned about the violations of a whistle-blower’s rights, or because of those one million documents that Snowden had with him? And why did Snowden not give those documents to independent journalists when he had a chance? Perhaps they were for “Russian eyes” only?

Epstein also shows that even Snowden’s time in Hong Kong is veiled in mystery. It is still not publicly known where he spent the first ten days after his arrival until he checked into a hotel from where he soon afterward contacted Poitras, Greenwald, and Gellman. According to Epstein, for ten days, Snowden did not use his credit card or his phone or internet account. Still, he had to eat and live someplace. Perhaps the Chinese intelligence service gave him a helping hand?

Be that as it may, it is very interesting that soon after Snowden’s arrival in Moscow, there began an uninterrupted series of the Russian foreign policy successes. The geostrategically important Crimean peninsula, which was expected to be the main prize of the violent pro-Western coup d’état in Ukraine with the aim of installing NATO troops there, was in a blitzkrieg fashion taken over by Russia without a shot being fired. Not only were the Russian navy and airforce not kicked out of the Black Sea (which was the covert goal of the entire operation), but they have since projected their power and extended their influence into the Mediterranean through the intervention in Syria and now, evidently, also in Libya.

The European Union found itself dealing with a whole set of internal and external challenges, which are putting even its continued survival in the existing form under a question mark. And, of course, the almost daily scandals in the U.S. regarding the alleged Russian influence on the political scene and on the president Donald Trump have created the atmosphere of utter confusion, political disorientation, and paralysis of the system. Such a state of affairs has always been the ultimate goal of the best planned-out hostile counter-intelligence operations.

There is no evidence that Snowden is a Russian operative and we may never find out the full truth. However, his actions very much remind me of the actions of the U.S. scientists, the Communist party members and sympathizers, who, in the 1940s, passed on to the Russian intelligence the secret documents regarding the making of a nuclear bomb. Their actions directly led to the formation of a bipolar international order with the two nuclear super-powers presiding over the world. In my opinion, the actions of Snowden, by fatally subverting U.S. dominance in cyberspace, have, in a similar way, cemented the foundations for global multipolarity.

Translated into English by the author. Originally published in the independent Montenegrin political weekly Monitor, March 10, 2017.

]]>Calexit? Prospects for Independent Californiahttps://geopoliticskovacevic.blogactiv.eu/2017/02/11/calexit-prospects-for-independent-california/
Sat, 11 Feb 2017 21:35:17 +0000http://geopoliticskovacevic.blogactiv.eu/?p=198» read more]]>The processes of dissolution that have brought down the East Socialist bloc almost thirty years ago have now spread to the West. The global ideological paradigm, which was so triumphant at the time as to arrogantly proclaim itself “the end of history,” has been suffering one defeat after another.

First, in June 2016, Brexit marked the beginning of an end of the European neoliberal project. Then, in November 2016, came the victory of Donald Trump in the U.S. presidential election, which Trump himself called “Brexit plus,” emphasizing the ideological similarity of the two events.

Like the collapse of the Soviet Union decades earlier, both Brexit vote and Trump’s victory were presented by the mainstream media as sudden and unexpected. Supposedly, not even the intelligence agencies could foresee them happening, otherwise, it is claimed that they would have done more to protect the political status quo.

Of course, this entire narrative is the product of a profound self-deception. The neoliberal globalist elite projected the kind of political reality it wanted to see and swept all anomalies and deviations under the rug. It was not willing to confront the consequences of its activities. It preferred to operate by ultimatum rather than by dialogue. Memorable, in this respect, were the threats directed at the Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis by his European colleagues.

Now, it is too late to return to the past. The results of the presidential elections in France, especially if the candidate of the right populists Marine Le Pen wins, will represent the kiss of death for the Brussels bureaucracy. Le Pen was seen in New York City right after Trump’s victory and the leading pro-Putin Russian newspaper Izvestia recently published an interview with her on the front page. It is clear, therefore, what a new International looks like. Perhaps this is a kind of revenge for the defeat suffered thirty years ago, but without any internationalist-socialist phraseology: it is a discourse of pure Ceasarism and the charismatic-populist force.

Global geopolitical and ideological clashes are also reflected in the U.S. domestic politics. Here, in California, I have, for some time already, followed carefully the development and activities of the California independence movement.

Ten days ago, the California attorney general officially approved the initiative of the “Yes California” Movement for the change of an article in the Californian Constitution, which defines California as “an inseparable part” of the United States, and the subsequent holding of a referendum on Californian independence in March 2019. If the proponents of this initiative collect about 600,000 signatures by July 25, 2017, the initiative will be put on the ballot in November 2018. Considering that there are about 18 million registered voters in California, it appears likely that enough signatures will be collected.

The recent public opinion polls show that the support for independence at this time is about 25 percent. However, if we take into consideration that the majority of Californians oppose Donald Trump and his policies (he won only 33.2 percent of the Californian vote, while Hillary Clinton got 61.5 percent), obviously, there is plenty of political space for the support to grow over time.

At the same time, a lot of work is being done on the formation of a new independence-oriented political party, the California National Party (CNP). According to its political program, the CNP is a party of the Left and it stands firmly on the principles of multietnic solidarity, peace, and international cooperation. Its main argument for independence is precisely the protection of these progressive values and the use of Californian economic resources for their defense. After all, California is the sixth economy in the world and its contribution to the U.S. military budget is bigger than the military budget of Russia. The CNP leaders claim that their biggest political inspiration comes from the Scottish campaign for independence, which will likely be intensified now that Brexit has become a certainty.

Even though it is still not officially registered, the CNP had its first candidate run for a political office during the electoral primaries in the district of San Diego. His name was Louis Marinelli and he came in third with 6.4 percent of the vote.

It is very curious that Marinelli is a non-Californian American citizen who has lived in Russia for years and is known as a strong critic of the U.S. foreign policy. Could the whole enterprise have started as a Russian-engineered intelligence operation whose vector has changed after Trump’s victory? Marinelli declared himself as a Trump supporter and left the party. The CNP is now headed by Trump’s political opponents.

It needs to be kept in mind, however, that after the American Civil War which was fought after the secession of 11 federal states, the U.S. Supreme Court made a ruling that the secession could legally come to pass only via a constitutional amendment approved by 38 federal states and two-thirds of the U.S. Congress. Mission impossible!

This column was originally published by the Montenegrin political weekly Monitor on February 10, 2017. It was translated into English by the author.

]]>CIA, the Golitsyn-Nosenko Affair, and the Russian TV Series ‘Traitors’https://geopoliticskovacevic.blogactiv.eu/2017/01/22/cia-the-golitsyn-nosenko-affair-and-the-russian-tv-series-traitors/
Sat, 21 Jan 2017 23:40:37 +0000http://geopoliticskovacevic.blogactiv.eu/?p=192» read more]]>Whether or not there was in fact any Russian “hacking” of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, it is not possible to deny the ineptness and incompetence of the CIA in dealing with this issue. The public statements of its leading figures as well as the declassified reports released to the public so far have only further discredited the CIA leadership in the eyes of objective observers and impartial intelligence specialists. Any student in the top 25 percent of my classes could have written a segment on the RT TV channel included in the recent report. And I am sure that he or she would have used more recent sources than the fall of 2012.[1]

It is mind-boggling to think that the U.S. taxpayers have been subsidizing this kind of shoddy work with tens of billions of dollars every year. How many hospitals and schools could have been built and how many people could have obtained decent health care and received university scholarships on this money! There is no doubt in my mind that all those responsible for this tragic waste of money and other resources must be fired and replaced by conscientious individuals whose expertise will rise above political opportunism.

This is not the first time that the CIA has proven to be woefully inadequate to protect the key national security interests of the U.S. In fact, it appears that its biggest and most damaging failure took place in the 1950s when the formidable Soviet intelligence agency, the KGB, penetrated it by recruiting an insider who was never discovered. It all went downhill from then on.

The Golitsyn-Nosenko Affair

The issue of an undiscovered KGB spy in the top echelons of the CIA represented the crux of the infamous Golitsyn-Nosenko affair which pitted different departments within the CIA against one another in the 1960s and severely impacted the work of the agency for years. On one side, there was the long-time CIA counter-intelligence chief James Jesus Angleton and the CIA Soviet section officers Tennent (Pete) Bagley and David Murphy. On the other, there was the CIA chief William Colby and the CIA officers Bruce Solie and John Hart.

The context as well as both the prologue and the epilogue to the affair are described in detail in Pete Bagley’s 2007 book Spy Wars.[2]It essentially came down to the question of which KGB defector was to be trusted: Anatoly Golitsyn or Yuri Nosenko.

Golitsyn was the first of the two to defect to the West, already in December 1961. His key message was that the KGB penetrated the leadership of all Western intelligence agencies. Not only the CIA, but also the MI-5 & 6 and the French DGSE. Though this claim may sound incredible, the subsequent escape to Russia of Kim Philby, who was one step removed from being the head of MI-6 and was the key liaison between the MI-6 and the CIA in the late 1940s, and the resignation of the MI-5 chief Roger Hollis in the mid-1960s demonstrated that Bagley and Angleton were far from being paranoid (as they were slandered by their opponents) in taking the side of Golitsyn.

However, that was not all Golitsyn claimed. He also insisted that all the defectors coming after him would be KGB plants sent to confuse and disorient the CIA and distract it from searching for a mole in its midst. This mole had been passing the KGB the valuable information with the potential to expose and damage most CIA operations in Europe and elsewhere, including the recruitment efforts within the Soviet Union.

The first KGB defector who came after Golitsyn was Nosenko. He first contacted the CIA in May 1962 in Geneva (where he was handled by Bagley), but decided to return to the Soviet Union. Then, in January 1964, Nosenko re-appeared in Geneva and turned himself over to the CIA.

The basic difference between Golitsyn’s and Nosenko’s claims was that while Golitsyn claimed that the Western intelligence agencies were penetrated, Nosenko claimed that they were not, that everything was fine, and that there was no reason to worry. That was precisely what Golitsyn claimed that any subsequent defector, a KGB plant, would do.

Golitsyn’s claim was the reason why Angleton had Nosenko confined for years in a special CIA prison and subjected to constant interrogations. However, Nosenko never admitted that he was a KGB plant, though his stories, according to Bagley, were absurdly inconsistent and incoherent. In Bagley’s opinion, Nosenko might have been a perfect Manchurian candidate. Peter Deriabin, another KGB officer who defected in the 1950s, concurred with Bagley’s judgment and his statement is included in Bagley’s book as an appendix.

Yet, with the new CIA leadership taking charge, Nosenko was rehabilitated, received a CIA pension, and began working as a CIA consultant. In 2008, a month before he died at age 81, he was presented with a letter of then-CIA director Michael Hayden which praised his service for the U.S. and implied that he was a bona fide defector.[3] On the other hand, Bagley, greatly disappointed, left the CIA in 1973, and Angleton was discredited (in another scandal) and forced to resign in 1975.

Bagley died in 2014 at age 88 soon after publishing a book entitled Spymaster based on the recollections of Sergey Kondrashev, a former high-level KGB official, who was familiar with the massive KGB Cold War deception operations against the West.[4] The Russian intelligence refused to allow Kondrashev to publish the book, but since he died in 2007, Bagley published it in the U.S. with the permission of Kondrashev’s family. Obviously, there are things in the book that today’s Russian intelligence apparatus would rather keep from becoming public knowledge. As with every intelligence agency in the world, this is always the issue of sources and methods.

And so, the mystery of what the KGB was really up to with Golitsyn and Nosenko continues to this day. However, in my opinion, the recently aired Russian TV series ‘Traitors’ adds a new and important twist to the story. In a round-about, indirect way, which is how all intelligence public statements and declassified products must be interpreted, it gives enough hints to make me conclude that Bagley and Angleton may have been right after all.

The Russian TV Series ‘Traitors’

The Russian TV station Zvezda [meaning the star], owned by the Russian military, produced this documentary TV series for three seasons starting in 2014.[5] It aired 24 episodes in total, eight in each season. They can all be found and viewed on Youtube.[6] The episodes covered 24 individuals declared traitors by the leadership of the Soviet Union, from the 1920s to the 1980s. There was even one American, Elizabeth Bentley, known as the “queen of Red espionage,” who, in the late 1940s, revealed to the FBI the network of the Soviet spies she organized on the territory of the U.S.[7] She was the only woman included.

The entire series was hosted by the ex-KGB officer Andrey Lugovoy who is sought by the British government to stand trial for the fatal polonium poisoning of the Russian intelligence defector Alexander Litvinenko in London. At this time, Lugovoy is a member of the Russian Duma [the lower house of the Parliament] representing the pro-government Liberal-Democratic Party (LDPR) led by the virulent Russian nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky. Quite recently, on January 9, 2017, Lugovoy was added to the list of the Russian citizens under U.S. sanctions.[8]

The Russian audiences appear to enjoy having former spies host documentary programs on TV. Anna Chapman, who was arrested for spying by the FBI in 2010 and, together with nine other so-called Illegals, exchanged for four U.S. spies imprisoned in Russia, also had her own show on REN TV. The title of her show was “The Secrets of the World. The Riddles of the Cosmos.”[9]

The 24 “traitors” covered by the TV Zvezda series included Anatoly Golitsyn and Yuri Nosenko. The episodes about them were aired in the second season of the series. I watched both episodes closely in order to test the following hypothesis: if Golitsyn was a genuine defector and Nosenko was a plant, then the presentation and treatment of Golitsyn will be more negative and harsher than the treatment of Nosenko. In fact, as I will explain in detail below, this is precisely what I found.

The episode on Golitsyn was aired first.[10] From the very beginning, the episode sought to present Golitsyn as somebody not to be trusted. It reported, for instance, that he was not liked by his co-workers and that his nickname was “the hunchback.” The KGB veterans interviewed in the episode also expressed distinctly negative opinions about him. The retired KGB general Alexander Duhanin, for instance, claimed that Golitsyn did not have access to any significant information, but claimed to know a lot in order to get more money and privileges from the Western intelligence services. He emphasized the alleged Golitsyn’s love of luxury and the heightened sense of self-importance. The episode even went so far as to say that Golitsyn was diagnosed as a paranoid personality with pathological symptoms by the chief CIA psychologist, John Gittinger. This, by the way, is directly contradicted by Bagley who, in his book, claimed that it was Nosenko who was diagnosed by Gittinger, and not Golitsyn.[11]

In fact, Bagley in particular singled out Oleg Nechiporenko, former KGB officer now turned historian of the Russian intelligence, as somebody who was especially eager to extol Nosenko’s genuineness as a defector and demean Golitsyn.[12] Bagley suspected that this was a part of the enduring KGB/SVR plan to hide the Cold War penetration of the CIA. Nechiporenko’s appearance in the episode confirmed Bagley’s claims made years earlier. His statements did indeed represent the character assassination of both Golitsyn and Angleton.

Even Edward Jay Epstein, a well-known U.S. journalist and intelligence community researcher, who was a friend of Bagley and wrote a preface to Bagley’s last book, did not seem convincing in his defense of Golitsyn. This, I suspect, was the result of selective presentation of his statements by the episode’s producers.

In the end, the viewer is left with the impression that Golitsyn was an extremely successful but psychologically unstable con artist who fooled the Western intelligence community in order to get rich and did not provide them with any secret intelligence worth the money he received. However, the episode admitted that Golitsyn was nevertheless sentenced to death in absentia by the KGB and that his only daughter Katya died suddenly, supposedly of drug overdose, in Rome in the 1970s. Golitsyn himself passed away recently, but neither the time of his death nor the place of burial are known, which is another difference between him and Nosenko.

Although the episode on Nosenko had pretty much the same cast of interviewees, their reactions to Nosenko were very different from their reactions to Golitsyn. Their attitude toward Nosenko was much more upbeat: Nosenko was not “the hunchback,” but the son of Stalin’s favorite government minister. Such a positive attitude was particularly surprising, considering that they also claimed that Nosenko caused grave damage to the KGB foreign operations and that the damage was more extensive in scope than that caused by Golitsyn.

Nechiporenko, for instance, claimed that approximately 300 to 400 Soviet intelligence agents were recalled to Moscow due to being exposed by Nosenko’s revelations, the claim which was already debunked by Bagley’s book.[13] He also stated that Angleton convinced Bagley that Nosenko was a KGB plant, whereas Bagley in detail described how he came to this conclusion on his own, after months and months of interrogating Nosenko. How could Nechiporenko know better than Bagley what the latter himself went through?

Moreover, Nechiporenko directly stated that Nosenko could not have been a double agent, whereas the general Duhanin ridiculed and caricatured the CIA interrogation process. They seemed to be defending Nosenko, which was paradoxical if he had caused as much damage to the KGB as they claimed he had. It was as if it was more significant to them that Nosenko was victimized by the CIA than that he gave away very important Soviet secrets. Should they not be content that the person who betrayed them had to suffer the consequences of his misdeed, even if by their opponents’ hand? There is only one condition under which they should not: if Nosenko worked for them.

In fact, this is precisely the conclusion that one comes away with, if one compares Bagley’s account of the Golitsyn-Nosenko affair and the account presented by Lugavoy and TV Zvezda. By embracing Nosenko with open arms (he even lectured at Langley) and smearing Bagley and Angleton, the CIA chose to trust the wrong guy and therefore utterly failed in counterintelligence work. It is likely that many of its problems today stem from the repetition of this same basic pattern. It would not be inconceivable that even right now there is a Russian mole in its midst whom it cannot ferret out because it has consistently refused to learn the lessons of the past.

]]>Will Nikolai Patrushev Be the New Prime Minister of Russia?https://geopoliticskovacevic.blogactiv.eu/2016/12/09/will-nikolai-patrushev-be-the-new-prime-minister-of-russia/
Fri, 09 Dec 2016 20:50:08 +0000http://geopoliticskovacevic.blogactiv.eu/?p=187» read more]]>With the recent arrest of the Russian economy minister Aleksey Ulyukaev by the FSB, the Russian equivalent of the FBI, the president Vladimir Putin’s purge of the liberal faction within the Kremlin nomenklatura is now in the full public view.[1] This faction is headed by the Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev who succeeded Putin as the president from 2008 to 2012. It now appears that Medvedev is in danger of losing his position and perhaps, just like Ulyukaev, his freedom as well. In fact, the last month’s sudden cancellation of Medvedev’s trip to Serbia,[2] which at this time is the only (and hence very significant) official Russian ally in East-Central Europe, demonstrates that his authority is already seriously eroded.

Therefore, there are two questions that require a thorough investigation. First, why would Putin conduct the purge at this time (or at all)? And, secondly, if the purge of Medvedev does indeed take place, who will be his replacement?

The Russian Liberals’ Fault

We first need to define what it means to be a liberal in the Russian government today. The designation does not refer to political positions (like in the U.S.) as much as it highlights the approach to the economy. Liberals in Russia are those who believe that the role of the state should be minimized and that private, corporate ownership is the best way to run the economy. They are also advocates of Russia’s full-fledged participation in the international economic system dominated by the so-called Bretton Woods institutions, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization. Obviously, this means a commitment to the so-called free trade and opposition to any policy of tariffs and import substitution.

The liberals were politically dominant in Russia during Boris Yeltsin’s two-term presidency in the 1990s. Those who brought Putin to power in the late 1990s (the intelligence and military networks) made an uneasy compromise with the liberals, which lasted throughout Putin’s first two presidential terms (2000-2008). The liberals even seemed in ascendance after Medvedev replaced Putin at the helm.

However, soon afterwards, in August 2008, a surprise military attack by the Georgian troops, heavily assisted by NATO and the U.S., on the rebellious enclave of South Ossetia defended by the Russian “peace-keepers” took place. Consequently, the Russian military directly intervened and the Georgians were pushed back. That was the first time since the end of the Cold War that the Russian military crossed the borders of Russia. This created a pattern that will later be repeated in Ukraine, Syria, and no doubt in other places in the future. The genie was out of the bottle.

This was the beginning of the end for the Russian liberals who counted on honest and friendly relations with the West and believed in the existence of a fair playing field for Russia in the global economy. It became clear that the West would allow nothing of the sort. No wonder then that Putin, who initially was ambivalent about running again, returned as the president in 2012.

In the late 2013, the conflict in Ukraine flared up. The U.S.-engineered coup in Kiev, the annexation of Crimea (or the re-unification, as the Russians call it), the rebellion in Donbass, the U.S. and the EU economic sanctions, all followed in quick succession. There was now no going back. The liberal road proved to be a blind alley.

The parliamentary elections in September 2016 put the last nail in the liberals’ coffin. Though Medvedev is a nominal leader of the ruling United Russia party which won two-thirds of the seats, it is clear to all that the real leader is Putin. This is why it will come as no surprise when we soon read in the Russian press that Medvedev no longer heads the party.

Putin is now embarked on a different, non-liberal economic road for Russia. He plans to orient Russia toward building up regional economic and political alliances with its neighbors in East and Central Asia. The Eurasian Economic Union, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (in which China is a member), the Collective Security Treaty Organization, the BRICS grouping, will all be strengthened at the expense of the Bretton Woods institutions mentioned earlier and supported by the liberals. This is why liberals will increasingly be pushed out, with some of the most prominent ones arrested in order to send the waves of fear through their ranks.

The ordinary Russian people have no pity for the liberals because they know well the extent to which liberal politicians and their business cronies got rich abusing governmental power for private gain. The recently arrested Ulyukaev is the case in point. Most liberal politicians can easily move to the West – their apartments, yachts, and bank accounts are waiting for them. This is why the majority of the population will support Putin’s purge, even though the purge will be far from democratic and may at times turn violent.

The New KGB Aristocracy

Putin will replace the purged liberals by his trusted allies from the intelligence and military structures. One of them Sergey Naryshkin, the former president of the Russian Parliament, has been appointed to the position of the chief of the Russian external intelligence agency (SVR) immediately after the elections results were in. I have discussed Naryshkin’s appointment in detail in an earlier article,[3] but what is important to keep in mind here is that by appointing a long-time friend and fellow intelligence operative, Putin has cut off any possibility of the liberal insiders at the top leaking national security information to the West. In other words, Putin has built up another layer of protection around the future Russian military and intelligence agenda. In my opinion, he demonstrated that he had no trust left in the West and that he was getting the country ready for a possible military confrontation.

It is precisely this trend that I see continuing, regardless of the fact that, unexpectedly for many, Donald Trump, and not Hillary Clinton, was elected to be the next. U.S. president. In fact, those in the pro-Clinton defeated faction of the U.S. establishment, including the CIA and the Pentagon, who have built their careers and made their fortunes on the gospel of Russophobia, may precipitate a serious incident in Europe and blame it on the Russians, thus presenting Trump with a fait accompli when he gets inaugurated. The Lithuanian foreign minister Linas Linkevicius, who calls Russia “not a super-power, but a super-problem,” has already started the tour of NATO member states claiming to his interlocutors that Russia might use the U.S. presidential transition period to “test” Europe.[4] This statement has to be taken seriously because NATO has a long history of blaming the consequences of its own subversive activities on its opponents. One needs only to think of the Operation Gladio.

This is why I think that, parallel with his efforts to develop a detente relations with the U.S. under Trump, Putin will bring in more personal loyalists into the highest offices of the Russian government. Considering the power of the U.S./NATO lobby working against it, the chances of an authentic detente (unfortunately) do not look very good and Putin knows that he must not make a misstep. He may not have another chance.

In this kind of game with very high stakes, Medvedev, who was already criticized by Putin over his lukewarm reaction prior and during NATO intervention in Libya,[5] is simply not reliable enough. In my opinion, this is why Putin will replace him with Nikolai Patrushev, the current secretary of the Russian National Security Council and essentially Putin’s national security advisor.

Patrushev is one of the top members of the so-called KGB aristocracy of whose mission to lead Russia he himself spoke in an interview more than 15 years ago at the time when Russia was in the midst of the Chechnya crisis that dangerously threatened its very foundations.[6] Such an early mention of this powerful group, which later came to yield tremendous power in the Russian political life, shows that Patrushev was one of its main driving forces.

Nikolai Patrushev’s Political Profile

Over the years, Nikolai Patrushev has been even closer to Putin than Naryshkin. They are almost the same age and their friendship goes back to the 1970s KGB days in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). In the late 1990s, Patrushev’s rise closely followed Putin’s. It is very significant that it was Patrushev who succeeded Putin as the head of the FSB and held this position for nine years (1999-2008), which is longer than anybody since the Communist Yuri Andropov who was the KGB head from 1967 until 1982 and then became the leader of the Soviet Union (that is, the general secretary of the central committee of the Soviet Communist party).

This analogy may not be accidental. After all, in 2006, there was some speculation that Patrushev would succeed Putin.[7] However, the position went to Medvedev, a member of the liberal camp and not a KGB aristocrat. I believe that now the political tide has turned.

In his interviews with various Russian newspapers, Patrushev, who has a doctorate in law, reveals himself as a serious scholar of the post-WWII global politics. He is a strong critic of the U.S. foreign policy claiming that the U.S. involvement in the world is bent on regime change and state fragmentation.[8] He blames the U.S. for the break-up of Yugoslavia, the numerous so-called color revolutions, the putsch in Ukraine, and the carnage in the Middle East. In fact, he asserts that the wars of the Yugoslav succession were nothing else but the testing ground for the ongoing efforts to break up the former Soviet Republics, including Russia itself.[9] In all of this, he discerns a malicious Western anti-Russian prejudice that is grounded in the historical push for the control of the Eastern territories and resources. This puts Patrushev firmly in the tradition of the Russian Eurasianists. As a result, if chosen by Putin to be the next prime minister, he can be expected to formulate and oversee a very hawkish foreign and national security policy.

I think the odds of Putin making this decision sometime soon are high. In the difficult weeks and months ahead, he needs to stabilize the Kremlin and get it ready for likely provocations both inside the country and on its borders. Patrushev has proven that he can accomplish any tasks entrusted to him with flying colors while, at the same time, being absolutely loyal to Putin. Even though outwardly Putin will no doubt give both Trump and peace a chance, in the inner corridors of the Kremlin, Lubyanka, and Yasenevo, preparations for a defensive war will continue unabated. Putin will allow no repetition of either 1941 or 1991. And neither will Patrushev.

]]>The Clash of Patriarchs: Kirill I, Bartholomew I, and the Future of the Orthodox Churchhttps://geopoliticskovacevic.blogactiv.eu/2016/11/12/the-clash-of-patriarchs-kirill-i-bartholomew-i-and-the-future-of-the-orthodox-church/
Sat, 12 Nov 2016 04:48:48 +0000http://geopoliticskovacevic.blogactiv.eu/?p=177» read more]]>Just a few months after he was enthroned as the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia in February 2009, Kirill I travelled to Istanbul to meet with Bartholomew I of Constantinople, the Ecumenical Patriarch, historically the “first among equals” in the Orthodox Church hierarchy.

A mere six years older than Kirill, Bartholomew has held this prestigious position since 1991, the beginning of his tenure strangely coinciding with the break-up of the Soviet Union. An ethnic Greek born on the Turkish island of Gökçeada (called Imbros until 1970), Bartholomew spent much of his life in the West. He studied in Italy, Switzerland, and Germany, and served as the metropolitan of Philadelphia from 1972 to 1990. [1] Over the years, Bartholomew’s political statements and actions have mirrored so closely the U.S. and NATO global geopolitical agenda that, as a result, he was fêted everywhere he went in the West. He received numerous honorary doctorates (in the U.S., at both Georgetown and Yale) and distinguished awards, including the Congressional Gold Medal, which, in addition to the Presidential Medal of Freedom, is the highest U.S. civilian award.

There has been a long-term effort in the U.S. to make Bartholomew a statesman-type celebrity figure, the equivalent of an Orthodox “pope.” For example, he was a guest interviewee in the well-known CBS show “60 Minutes” [2] and the New York Times wrote about him in laudatory terms. [3] The U.S. mainstream media has routinely referred to him as the “leader of 300 million Orthodox Christians,” which is both de facto and de jure inaccurate because close to the two thirds of these 300 million live in Russia and ex-Soviet states and are under the direct jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church and Patriarch Kirill. All along, however, it appears that he has been a rather pliable religious figure who accepted the role accorded to him by the Western Establishment in exchange for various privileges. As the relations between the West and Russia began to deteriorate in the mid-2000s, it seemed certain that Bartholomew would be increasingly “instrumentalized” by the emerging anti-Russian “war party” both in the U.S. and in Europe.

Bartholomew and Kirill

The prevention of precisely such a scenario seems to have been one of the most significant reasons for Kirill’s visit to Istanbul in July 2009. The official statements made after the meeting sounded conciliatory enough. Bartholomew for instance spoke of the necessity of sending to “the pages of history, “clouds [which] have temporarily overshadowed ties between the brethren churches.” Kirill, in his turn, called for “a unified Orthodox response to the challenges of our time.” [4] However, significant disputes remained unresolved, one of which, regarding the status of the various contesting factions of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine, has acquired even more prominence recently with the eruption of violent conflict in the Donbass region. One of the factions, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyivan Patriarchate, not recognized by the Moscow Patriarchate but courting recognition from Bartholomew, was sharply critical of the alleged Russian involvement. Its leader Patriarch Filaret compared Putin to Cain and claimed that Putin was acting under the influence of Satan. [5]

In another attempt to resolve their differences, Kirill and Bartholomew met in Moscow in May 2010. This time they met under the auspices of Dmitry Medvedev who was then the president of Russia, while Putin was the prime minister. Medvedev, who generally followed a more liberal Western-leaning political course than Putin did in his second presidential mandate (2004-2008), was interested in making lasting peace with Bartholomew and perhaps bringing him on to the Russian side. He stated that the “strengthening of the dialogue … between two sister churches is …. especially important for Russia.” [6] The same sentiment was echoed by Patriarch Kirill who once again insisted on the unity of the Orthodox Church. “We, all Orthodox churches, local Orthodox churches, are parts of one church: we belong to this single church: that is the right orthodox ecclesiology: there is only one Orthodox Church,” Kirill said.

Bartholomew, however, was not swayed. He rejected Medvedev’s and Kirill’s pleas for the equality of all local Orthodox churches and for the politics of compromise in forming the unified Orthodox front. The role he had been assigned by the Western centers of power was to insist on his ultimate authority over all other patriarchs, because this meant the existence of permanent discord, which is in line with the long-term Western imperialist strategy of divide et impera in Eastern Europe and beyond. And so, as required by this script, Bartholomew prefaced his remarks with “we as the mother church,” [7] emphasizing his supposed primacy. It was clear that no inter-Orthodox reconciliation was to be expected any time soon.

Who is the Pope’s Best Friend?

The rivalry between Bartholomew and Kirill only intensified over time. It soon spilled into their relations with other religious leaders and the most globally prominent among them, the Pope. Considering that he was enthroned as the patriarch in 1991, Bartholomew has had very long and cordial relations with various popes. He met with Pope John Paul II no less than four times. [8] During their last meeting in November 2004, John Paul II returned to Bartholomew the relics of two very important figures in the history of Christianity, St. John Chrysostom and St. Gregory the Theologian, brought to Rome in the Middle Ages. This was interpreted as a significant step toward closer cooperation between the Western and Eastern branches of once unified Christianity.

It is important to note that in this way, just like the U.S. mainstream media, John Paul II constructed the public image of Bartholomew as his equal on the Orthodox side. It is likely that John Paul II, a native of Poland, also had other political and personal reasons for doing. He had always conceived his life-long theological opponent, the Russian Orthodox Church, as being under the control of the Russian intelligence community and serving the geopolitical goals of the Russian state, whether Communist or not.

After John Paul II passed away in April 2005, Bartholomew continued the same type of relations with his successors, Benedict XVI and Francis I. He even attended the inaugural mass of Pope Francis in March 2013. [9] The two of them have so far signed three joint declarations, the most recent being in April 2016 on the Greek island of Lesvos, calling on the international community, both in the West and the East, to address the tremendous and traumatic suffering of the refugees from the Middle East and Central Asia. [10]

However, the meeting on Lesvos took place under the shadow of Pope Francis’s earlier, February 2016 meeting with Patriarch Kirill in Havana, Cuba. This was the first time in history that the pope met with the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church. “Finally, brother” were the words with which Francis greeted Kirill. [11] This was a great breakthrough for the Russian Orthodox Church diplomacy and positioned it as a much more formidable rival to Bartholomew for the primacy in the Orthodox world than ever before. In fact, some observers claimed that this, in fact, was the main reason Francis also met with Bartholomew shortly afterwards.

The Pan-Orthodox Summit in Crete

Bartholomew’s and Kirill’s recent meetings with the pope were, in my opinion, attempts to rally domestic and international support for setting the agenda at another unique event in the history of the Orthodox Christianity, the Pan-Orthodox Council, the gathering of all universally recognized national Orthodox churches, which has not convened for more than 1,000 years. Initially scheduled to take place in Istanbul, it was moved to the Greek island of Crete (most likely for security reasons) and scheduled for mid-June 2016.

However, the rhetoric between the Patriarchate of Moscow and the Ecumenical Patriarchate, ultimately grounded in the different geopolitical commitments of their leaders, increasingly sharpened and the Russian Orthodox Church, together with three allied churches, the Bulgarian, the Georgian, and the Antiochian Orthodox Churches, decided to pull out of the meeting altogether. [12] The Serbian Orthodox Church vacillated until the last moment, but ultimately decided to attend, which can be seen as a victory of those who are closer to the pro-Western as opposed to the pro-Russian factions with the church. In the end, only 10 out of 14 recognized Orthodox churches participated in the work of the Council, making its deliberations and decisions invalid for most of the Orthodox world represented by the Russian Orthodox Church. In other words, those who have worked against the “united Orthodox front” called for by Patriarch Kirill had a reason to rejoice once again.

Bartholomew and Fethullah Güllen?

Not long after the conclusion of the Council, on July 15, 2016, a coup d’état was attempted against the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, but was unsuccessful in attaining its objectives. Erdoğan accused the exiled cleric Fethullah Güllen and his network in Turkey and abroad for the planning and organization of the coup attempt. A few weeks later, an article entitled “Will Ankara Take Aim at Patriarch Bartholomew?” appeared in the online journal Oriental Review, an independent Moscow-based geopolitical publication. [13] It was signed by a retired U.S. ambassador and high-level State and Defense department official Arthur Hughes and chronicled the history of good relations between Güllen and Bartholomew. [14] The article implied that Bartholomew supported the coup-plotters and that therefore should be sanctioned (perhaps even exiled) by Turkey. Obviously, that would spell the end of his influence in the Orthodox world.

Soon, however, Hughes wrote to the editor of Oriental Review as well as to the various U.S. media outlets, denying the authorship of the article and calling it “a total fabrication.” [15] He also refused to speculate as to who could have submitted the article under his name, claiming that he has “no experience or involvement in Turkish matters nor matters of the [Orthodox] Church.” Well, the least that can be said is that Hughes must have had at least some involvement in “Turkish affairs” considering that he served as deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs in the 1990s. [16]

Be that as it may (and intelligence agencies have long been known for planting articles under the names of living, dead, or non-existing individuals), the claims of this article go directly in favor of Patriarch Kirill’s positions. The fact that it was first published in Russia also raises suspicions. However, the links of friendship and cooperation between Bartholomew and Güllen can hardly be denied. After all, when asked in 2012 about Güllen’s possible return to Turkey, Bartholomew replied: “We really love him. We hope he comes back soon.” [17]

All this shows that the struggle for the institutional control over the future direction of the Orthodox Church, driven by rival geopolitical agendas, is picking up steam. Although Patriarch Bartholomew has had the upper hand for a long time, Patriarch Kirill’s efforts should not be underestimated.

]]>Living Dangerously: The Recent Arms Race in the Balkanshttps://geopoliticskovacevic.blogactiv.eu/2016/10/25/living-dangerously-the-recent-arms-race-in-the-balkans/
Tue, 25 Oct 2016 07:14:22 +0000http://geopoliticskovacevic.blogactiv.eu/?p=173» read more]]>It is hardly a secret that the most vocal advocates of NATO expansion into East-Central Europe were the U.S. weapons manufacturers and their lobbyists. For instance, one of the founders of the U.S. Committee to Expand NATO, a non-profit advocacy organization, was Bruce Jackson, a vice president at Lockheed Martin and a former U.S. Army intelligence officer.[1] As even the New York Times pointed out at the time, such a work biography was fairly common among those who pressured the Congress into expanding the Alliance, though the threat from its main enemy (as well as the main enemy itself) turned into dust. In just two years in the mid-1990s, the six biggest U.S. arms makers – MacDonnell Douglas, Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Textron Inc. – reported spending $51 million on lobbying, most of which went into the push for NATO expansion.[2] As the result, NATO almost doubled, expanding from 16 to 28 member states. Prodded by the big money, the Clinton Administration did not mind opening the Pandora’s box of future European conflicts and the six giants of the U.S. military-industrial-intelligence complex could rub their hands with a great deal of satisfaction. The vast new weapons markets, closed to them until the East-Central European militaries were forced to become “interoperable” with NATO “standards,” were theirs for taking. The East-Central European political elites, brought to power and/or infiltrated by these same corrupt corporate and lobbying networks, slashed their states’ health, education, and social programs, but embraced high military spending with open arms. Even while there was less and less money for bread, the money for guns was always found.

This is the trend that continues to this day with obviously tragic consequences: the more these states are pushed into accumulating heavy weaponry, the more likely it is that existing deep antagonisms between and within states, instead of being reconciled in a peaceful manner, will turn violent. This is especially true in the Balkans because the ruling Balkan elites have lost political legitimacy and electoral credibility in eyes of the majority of the population and the only way they have left for homogenizing their voter base is the manufacturing of an inside and/or outside threat from the “usual” suspects.

The U.S.-NATO military-industrial-intelligence complex has always been ready and willing to assist its political clients in the Balkans in augmenting their militaristic image and projection of power. However, recently, the Russian government and its weapons makers have also gotten into the same business, helping its client states. This makes the probability of a proxy war in the Balkans not as remote as it may have appeared just a couple years ago.

The Proxy Re-Armament

In October 2015, it was announced that the Pentagon would donate 16 M270 Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS) to the military of Croatia with strings attached: Croatia would have to buy rockets from the U.S. manufacturers. There was even talk of some of the rocket systems being re-designed to fire ballistic missiles, each missile coming with a hefty price tag of $2 million.[3] This further increases Croatia’s dependence on the U.S.- produced heavy artillery as all its existing Russian-made rocket systems (inherited from the Yugoslav army), at least some of which were still in working order, will be scrapped.

The Pentagon also promised Croatia 16 OH-58D Kiowa Warrior helicopters. They were to replace the Russian-made Mi-24s, which Croatia got rid of a decade ago when it was making final preparations for joining NATO. The first five of these helicopters were delivered to Croatia by the U.S. Army C-5 Galaxy transport plane at the end of July 2016.[4] The Croatian government agreed to pay all the taxes and the pilot training: the price tag – $30 million.

The dramatic increase in the number of rocket systems and attack helicopters in Croatia has seriously undermined the already shaky balance of power in the Balkans, established after the wars of Yugoslav secession in the 1990s. It appears that this is a part of the overall militarization strategy for Europe’s East drawn up by the Pentagon in recent years, supported by the Obama Administration, and heavily funded by the Republican-controlled Congress. When the profits of the U.S. military-industrial-intelligence complex are concerned, there are no differences between the Democrats and the Republicans. And so, the Pentagon’s 2017 East-Central European budget was quadrupled with a bipartisan blessing: from $789 million in 2016 to $3.4 billion.[5]

The tensions that this rapid U.S-engineered militarization is engendering in the Balkans are particularly noticeable with regards to Croatia’s relations with Serbia and vice versa. The Serbian government could hardly remain indifferent to Croatia’s increasing its military power projection and, predictably, it turned for help to Russia, its historically most important strategic ally.

In January 2016, Serbia was visited by Dmitry Rogozin, the Russian deputy prime minister in charge of defense matters. Rogozin is well known as Russia’s former ambassador to NATO (2008-2011) who earned Western dislike by his skilful defense of the Russian conduct in the 2008 war against Georgia. He published a book about his experiences at NATO headquarters under the title НАТОточкаРу [NATO dot Ru], which became a best-seller in Russia.[6] Rogozin was consulted by the Serbian government about the procurement of various types of military equipment. As a gift to the Serbian prime minister Aleksandar Vučić, Rogozin brought a plastic model of the Russian long-range surface to air missile system S-300 and stated that had Serbia had this system in 1999, NATO would not have dared to attack.[7]

However, as Vučić, who is not particularly inclined toward Russia, but has to appear so due to the popular pressure, pointed out the negotiations about Serbia’s acquiring S-300 may take “many months.” Still, the very thought of Serbia’s installing it on its territory leads to a lot of nervous laugher in the corridors of power in Brussels and Washington, DC. In other words, the U.S.-NATO strategists may get more than they bargained for when they started going about pumping the militaries of their clients in the Balkans. Moreover, some media outlets also reported that Rogozin and Vučić talked about the possibility of Serbia’s buying MIG-35s, the Russian newest fighter aircraft.[8] However, the price is prohibitive for the Serbian budget: $27 million per jet.

Since Rogozin’s visit, there have been a lot of reports in the Serbian media about the Russian weapons being sent to Serbia. The stories were typically promoted by the pro-Russian Serbian media outlets (especially the tabloid publications), whereas the Western-sponsored Serbian media and NATO friendly political analysts and journalists have done everything they could to minimize and/or deny the reports.[9] This is all to be expected as each side attempts to sway the public opinion in the direction of its political agenda, though there seems to be no doubt that some shipments of the Russian military equipment to Serbia are taking place.

However, as already pointed out, it should be kept in mind that the current government of the prime minister Aleksandar Vučić is the most pro-NATO Serbian government on record and that the Ministry of Defense it controls prefers to cooperate and collaborate with NATO than with Russia. In February 2016, Vučić’s government prepared a wide-ranging agreement with NATO, granting NATO troops the unrestricted freedom of movement and diplomatic immunity in Serbia, which was later signed into law by the Serbian president Tomislav Nikolić.[10] Vučić argued that this was something that was already negotiated by the previous goverments, but avoided to answer directly as to why the Russian military personnel was not granted the same privileges. Clearly, Vučić has to engage in the carefully crafted, underhanded effort to promote NATO interests, considering that the vast majority of the Serbian population is firmly against closer ties with NATO. It appears certain that Vučić’s political rating will plunge once the extent of his pro-NATO policies becomes more apparent to the general public.

At the same time, Vučić’s pro-NATO intrigues are made very complicated by the anti-Serb political rhetoric of the Croatian ruling elites, which have a clear backing and support of the U.S.-NATO networks. After all, the current president of Croatia, Kolinda Grabar Kitarović, was also the Croatian ambassador to the U.S. (2008-2011) and NATO assistant secretary general for public diplomacy (2011-2014). I have written extensively on the events surrounding her January 2015 election for president.[11] Together with the leaders of the two major Croatian political parties, the Croatian Democratic Community (HDZ) and the Social-Democratic Party (SDP), as well as the recently formed third major party “Most,” Grabar Kitarović has, in the last few months, amplified the aggressive political messages directed against Serbia. This rhetoric was accompanied by various nationalist provocations, such as for instance the unveiling of the monument to Miro Barešić, an extreme Croat nationalist who assassinated the Yugoslav ambassador to Sweden, Vladimir Rolović, in 1971. The unveiling was attended by several key members of the Croatian ruling political elite.[12]

Some analysts place this heated nationalist political discourse in the context of the early parliamentary elections scheduled for September 11, 2016. They argue that faced with the worsening economic crisis and the rapidly increasing public debt, which the allegiance to the ideology of neoliberalism imposed from the West makes even more fatal, the Croatian political heavy-weights can find no other way to make voters turn out and vote. In other words, they are seeking to raise their flagging legitimacy by ratcheting up the threat from Serbia. While the implementation of this political tactic is undeniable, there could be more to it than that.

This is so because there appears to be a consensus forming in certain U.S.-NATO circles that some kind of large-scale violent conflict with Russia in the coming years is likely and that therefore the Balkan peninsula may provide an ideal ground for testing that conflict’s initial stages. This is why they have pushed for the increased Pentagon’s weapons shipments to their Balkan client states, not only to Croatia, but also to Romania and Albania. In this context, it is especially troubling to note the reported transfer of U.S. nuclear weapons from the Incirlik military base in Turkey to the Deveselu base in Romania, thus significantly shortening their distance to Russia. The Deveselu air base already houses the new U.S. missile shield. Although the nuclear missiles transfer has been denied by the Romanian government, it was confirmed by reliable independent sources.[13]

There is no doubt that the Russian government is planning a set of counter-measures, which, in my opinion, will include the dramatic increase of the Russian military presence in the Balkans, including the delivery of powerful rocket and other weapons systems and hardware to the traditional allies, such as Serbia, the Serb Republic in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and perhaps even Macedonia.

The weapons of such tremendous destructive power have not been seen in the region since the demise of the extremely well-armed (but poorly commanded) Yugoslav People’s Army in the early 1990s. Left in the hands of the corrupt Balkan politicians who have absolutely no moral considerations for their constituents and serve at the whim of their Great Power sponsors, these weapons make possible catastrophic outcomes.

NOTES:

[1] http://www.globaldashboard.org/2014/09/04/bruce-jackson-man-took-nato-east/ Jackson was also the chairman of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq.

]]>Unfinished Business in the Balkans: Biden in Belgrade and Prishtinahttps://geopoliticskovacevic.blogactiv.eu/2016/09/20/unfinished-business-in-the-balkans-biden-in-belgrade-and-prishtina/
Tue, 20 Sep 2016 06:00:25 +0000http://geopoliticskovacevic.blogactiv.eu/?p=169» read more]]>From the very first days of the Obama administration, the vice president Joe Biden has taken over running the U.S. foreign policy agenda for the former Communist bloc in Europe. This self-appointed mandate applied not only to the ex-Soviet states, the best known cases being Ukraine and Georgia, but also to the states of ex-Yugoslavia in the Balkans. He has met with the proverbially corrupt Balkan political leaders on many occasions, either at the margins of international gatherings, such as the annual Munich Security Conference, or when they visited Washington, DC., and he called them his friends.

Biden has also “toured” the Balkans himself, most recently in mid-August 2016, taking with him his entire extended family. In general, he has behaved like an imperial pro-consul for the Balkans. As I have written in an earlier article, in which I examined in great detail the Biden business in the Balkans, in both his statements and activities, Biden has embodied the essential spirit of the U.S. global hegemony. In order to justify hegemonic projects, he has been willing to turn the truth upside down, so that “fancy words covered up torture chambers and targeted killings, wars masqueraded as peace, and imperial dictates were presented as sovereign decisions of free nations.”[1]

However, the world today is much less pliable to the logic of U.S. hegemony than it was when Biden started his first vice presidential term in 2009. Obviously, the manner in which he and others in the Washington corridors of power played their hand has had much to do with this outcome. There is no way to turn back the clock now. As F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Gatsby, one of the greatest characters in American fiction tragically realized, “you can’t bring back the past.” Whoever becomes the president (and the vice president) next will have to pick up and deal with the broken pieces that Biden and Co. so arrogantly and carelessly left behind. Considering the choices available in November, there is no reason to expect that the global situation will get better any time soon. Quite the contrary.

At least one of such “broken pieces” with the power to hurt for many years to come is located in the Balkans. This “broken piece” was the main reason for Biden’s mid-August visit to Belgrade and Prishtina and it had to do with the relations between Serbia and Kosovo. Biden has advocated the unilateral Kosovo independence so vociferously and for so long that he could actually be considered one of Kosovo’s founding fathers. The Kosovo Albanians definitely treat him so. During the press conference with the Kosovo president Hashim Thaçi on August 19, 2016, Biden openly revealed the extent to which he had been willing to lobby for Kosovo’s recognition by the international community of states. Referring to Thaçi, he said: “Every time you’ve come to my office, you’ve said, will you call the following presidents, Joe? He gives me a list when he comes as to what countries that hadn’t – you know I’m not kidding.” [2] And Biden sure called those presidents. He did not think that would be the degradation of the office of the U.S. vice president because Kosovo has all the features of a true U.S. economic and military (colonial) dependency.

After all, one of the most strategically important U.S. military bases – Camp Bondsteel – was constructed in eastern Kosovo almost immediately after the ending of NATO military intervention against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999. The base has since become a control & command outpost and a key facilitation point in the recent U.S. wars in the Middle East. Its significance (as well as belligerency) will only grow as both Russia and China become more involved in the Balkans, filling out the power vacuum left by the infighting and structural weaknesses within the European Union.

This is why Biden announced new financial injections for Kosovo, including “a new development assistance compact” headed by the Millennium Challenge Corporation, a U.S. foreign aid agency (functioning independently from USAID and the State Department), which is supposed to bring to Kosovo hundreds of millions of U.S. taxpayers’ dollars. This is in addition to about $2 billion that, according to Biden, the U.S. has already funneled into Kosovo since its proclamation of independence in 2008. Biden must be well aware that it is only this money that keeps Kosovo afloat considering that its ruling political elite, including Thaçi, is tightly linked with the networks of organized crime and wide-spread corruption and has very little regard for the living standards of the ordinary citizens of Kosovo, whether they are Albanian or Serb. However, for geopolitical reasons, Biden had nothing but praise for Thaçi, even saying at one point “and the rest of the world is following your leadership.”

It is possible that there is also something else which is motivating Biden’s praise for the Kosovo leadership. After all, during the same press conference, he himself admitted that “all politics is personal, particularly in international relations.” If we take into consideration how profitable business opportunities “suddenly” opened up for his son Hunter after the pro-U.S. coup in Ukraine, [3] which the elder Biden did all he could to legitimize in the eyes of international community, it may not be unreasonable to suppose that something similar is in the works in Kosovo. However, at this time, only certain symbolic honors and rewards are publicly visible. For instance, the Kosovo Parliament decided to name a highway leading to Camp Bondsteel after Biden’s recently deceased son Beau. [4] Beau Biden worked in Kosovo as an official of the U.S. Justice Department in the early 2000s. He died of brain cancer and one wonders whether his health was affected by the impact of depleted uranium left over in Kosovo from the hundreds of NATO bombs. It would not be the first time in history that the children pay for the sins of their fathers.

Belgrade in Croatia?

Prior to visiting Prishtina, Biden made a stop in Belgrade. Some critical observers claimed that as soon as he arrived, he right away made a breach in the diplomatic protocol. The protocol demands that every visiting foreign dignitary bow to the host nation’s flag held by a member of the special military guard. However, Biden seems to have ignored the Serbian flag, especially when compared to how the Russian president Vladimir Putin, the Chinese president Xi Jinping, and the German chancellor Angela Merkel acted in the similar situation. [5] Was this a sign of Biden’s still harboring animosity against Serbia stemming from its resistance to NATO? Or a sign of his disapproval of Serbia’s close economic relations with Russia? One can only speculate.

However, a much more embarrassing diplomatic faux pas was made by Biden later, when during the press conference with the prime minister Aleksandar Vučić, he thanked Vučić for his “positive vision for the future of Croatia(!)”. [6] Biden also stated that his first visit to the Balkans was “back in 1997, before the break-up of Yugoslavia,” which is historically inaccurate because Yugoslavia fell apart in 1991. In addition, he recalled meeting with the aging Tito in the company of the aging Averell Harriman, a top U.S. WWII diplomat, but also a Wall St. banker with financial links to Fritz Thyssen, one of the key Nazi financial sponsors in the 1930s. According to Biden, Tito and Harriman reminisced about some WWII events and spoke of “Franklin and Joe Stalin and Franklin Roosevelt”. Wasn’t there a Churchill instead of one of the Franklins?

Joking aside, Biden had some very serious messages to convey to the Serbs. He stated that he saw Serbia as a member of the “Euro-Atlantic” community which is a code word for NATO membership. Considering that the vast majority of the citizens of Serbia are against membership in NATO, Biden’s statement implied that the U.S. would engage, both overtly and covertly, in trying to break and dissolve that social consensus. How this is done can easily be understood if we recall the similar pro-NATO psychological operations in other Balkan states, some of which have been pushed into NATO, even without a national referendum. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were poured into the NATO-friendly political parties, media outlets, non-governmental organizations, and think tanks, while the opponents of NATO, even though they represented the majority opinion, were demonized as undemocratic, violent, ignorant, and “primitive”. To make his point even more forcefully, Biden openly praised “a strong military-to-military relationship” between the U.S. and Serbia and urged the Serbian leadership to facilitate the “increasing Serbian military’s interoperability with NATO forces.”

For the end of the press conference, Biden saved what he thought would a great PR boost for NATO promotion. Some pro-NATO media organizations immediately picked up the cue and announced that Biden publicly apologized for the 1999 NATO military intervention. [7] However, that is far from being the accurate interpretation of Biden’s words. Biden actually said: “I would like to add my condolences to the families of those whose lives were lost during the wars of the ’90s, including as a result of the NATO air campaign, in terms of responsibility”. As can easily be seen, the sentence is fairly convoluted. First of all, it hides the pernicious acts of war and war crimes against the civilian population under the innocuously sounding “air campaign”. Secondly, it buries NATO military intervention (which represented the violation of both international law and the U.S. Constitution) under the general heading of the “wars of the ’90s”. And, thirdly and most importantly, it does not clearly pinpoint those who could be held accountable in the court of law. Therefore, notwithstanding the media spin, this “so-called” apology will have no impact on the Serbian public opinion. The majority of the population will remain impervious to the U.S. and NATO “overtures” until those who committed crimes and/or carry command responsibility are not ready to atone for them, not only symbolically, but materially as well by paying damages to the families of innocent victims, such as the family of a three-year old Milica Rakić. [8] Neither Biden nor anybody in the U.S. and NATO leadership has even the slightest intention of doing that. This is just one of many indicators of the extent of their cruel arrogance and hypocrisy.

This is why Biden’s visit, though obviously personally rewarding, will do nothing to address even the short-term issue of the political stability and economic prosperity in the Balkans, let alone the prospect of its mid to long-term peaceful future. In large part due to the U.S. and NATO geopolitical engineering in which Biden was one of the chief engineers, the region has been permanently and fatally destabilized. Biden’s Balkan business is therefore not only unfinished; it is unfinishable.

]]>Putin in Slovenia: An Analysishttps://geopoliticskovacevic.blogactiv.eu/2016/08/15/putin-in-slovenia-an-analysis/
Mon, 15 Aug 2016 18:47:03 +0000http://geopoliticskovacevic.blogactiv.eu/?p=158» read more]]>Putin is no stranger to the ex-Yugoslav republic of Slovenia. In fact, in June 2001, when Slovenia was still neither an EU nor a NATO member state, it was chosen as a neutral meeting place for the first official meeting between him and the U.S. president George W. Bush. Ironically, the meeting took place in the Brdo Castle near Kranj, one of the long-time Communist leader Tito’s summer residences. At that time, the U.S. high level officials did everything they could to flatter Putin and get him to accept their hegemonic geopolitical agenda for Eastern Europe, Russia, and Eurasia in general. For instance, during the press conference that followed their two-hour long discussions, Bush stated that he could fully trust Putin in international matters because “he’s an honest, straight-forward man who loves his country. He loves his family. We share a lot of values. I view him as a remarkable leader. I believe his leadership will serve Russia well.” [1]

But, when Putin, unlike Yeltsin, whose hand-picked successor he was, proved unwilling to play along with the U.S. plans, his stature in the U.S. foreign policy discourse quickly deteriorated from that of “a remarkable leader” and an honest patriot to that of a brutal dictator and even “a thug”. This of course should come as a surprise to nobody because, as Henry Kissinger stated long ago, paraphrasing the British prime minister Lord Palmerstone, perhaps the most Machiavellian 19th century leader (in very heavy competition), in the conduct of (realist) foreign policy, there are “no permanent friends or enemies, only interests.”

And yet, even at that time, one could see possible fissures in the U.S-Russia relations, especially regarding the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the expansion of NATO. At the press conference, Putin showed a declassified document from the Soviet archives indicating that in 1954 the Soviet government asked NATO member states for closer association and even participation in NATO structures. This request was rejected and Putin pointed out that Russia got the same reply from Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeleine Albright when it filed an almost similar request in the 1990s. This was Putin’s subtle, diplomatic way of exposing the long-term, persistent anti-Russian orientation of NATO. However, as neither the Bush nor Obama administrations had either understanding or patience for diplomatic subtleties and rational compromises, NATO expansion into Eastern Europe continued unabated. That is why now, fifteen years later, instead of being a stable zone of peace and prosperity from Lisbon to Vladivostok, Europe finds itself on the brink, not just of a new Cold War, but of a possible nuclear confrontation.

The Second Visit

More than 10 years passed before Putin visited Slovenia again. He was already in his third year as a prime minister (having served out two presidential terms) when he came to the Slovenian capital Ljubljana in March 2011. He met with the then-Slovenian prime minister Borut Pahor and the then-president Danilo Türk. The focus of their discussions was at the time very prominent topic of the South Stream pipeline which was supposed to supply Southeastern Europe with the Russian gas. The Chairman of the Russian state-owned gas giant Gasprom Alexey Miller and the Chairman of the Slovenian gas company Geoplin Plinovodi Marjan Eberlinc even signed an agreement on forming a joint company to build and manage the Slovenian component of the pipeline. [2] However, as is well known, the whole project was abandoned soon afterwards under the intense political and economic pressure by the EU Brussels bureaucracy and the Obama administration first on Bulgaria, and then on other Balkan countries.

Still, at the time, the prime minister Pahor spoke of “a strategic partnership” between Slovenia and Russia. Strategic partnership implies long-term political cooperation on transnational issues that transcend daily politics, such as international terrorism, radical extremism, organized crime, climate change, etc. as well as the strengthening of economic links and projects. If we know that the Slovenian foreign policy, since independence in 1991, has been very closely coordinated with the Germanic bloc of Austria and Germany, it is not difficult to see that behind the Slovenian embrace of cooperation with Russia, one can see the Berlin-Vienna handwriting. The same thing is true these days and, in my opinion, explains one of the key reasons for Putin’s third visit to Slovenia which took place on July 30, 2016.

The Hidden Subtext Behind Putin’s Third Visit

Putin’s July visit to Slovenia was described in the influential Western mass media outlets under the headline of Putin’s supposedly “testing Western resolve” and unity on the anti-Russian sanctions. [3] There is no doubt that both Washington and Brussels would have preferred if Putin had stayed home. However, it seems a stretch to imagine that the Slovenes invited Putin on their own without close consultations with their allies in the EU and NATO. In fact, I’d say that the approval they sought and received was from the Austrian and German political establishments. This shows that there is a growing rift in the Brussels corridors of power between the pro-American (Atlanticist) faction and the pro-European (Continental) faction regarding the future of relations with Russia.

I expect this internal conflict, which may even threaten the existence of the present European Union institutions, to spill into the public view more clearly in the coming months, especially as the Russian parliamentary elections, the first in four years, are scheduled to take place on September 18, 2016. The two factions are bound to back the opposing sides, both covertly and overtly. The Atlanticists will do all they can to assist, financially and logistically, the Russian neo-liberal opposition, while the Continentals would like Putin and his political partners to win again. However, considering that the U.S. political establishment is currently distracted by the U.S. presidential race, it appears that Putin will not have a hard time in defeating his political opponents. Perhaps this is the main reason why the date for the parliamentary elections was moved from December to September by the State Duma in 2015, though the decision was officially justified by budgetary savings. [4] The Russian presidential elections planned for March 2018 are of course a different story, but a lot of water will pass under the bridge until then. One can only hope that some of it will not be bloody.

Putin’s third visit to Slovenia was described as informal by the Slovene government. Just as during the previous visit, Putin’s main host was Borut Pahor, who is, since 2012, the president of Slovenia. It is important to note, however, that the presidential position in Slovenia is largely ceremonial and that the real political authority is wielded by the prime minister Miro Cerar (who comes from a different political party). This fits with the Slovene government’s characterization of the visit. Otherwise, it would be a serious diplomatic downgrade directed at Putin.

Pahor and Putin appear to have developed friendly personal relations over the years. It was reported that when they first met officially in 2011, they decided on the project of building a memorial for the Russian and Soviet soldiers killed in the WWI and WWII on the territory of Slovenia. [5] Now, five years later, Putin was present at the unveiling of that memorial in Ljubljana. He also gave a speech in the Slovenian mountains near the Vršič Pass at the site of a chapel built by the Russian WWI POWs in the memory of their fallen comrades. Evidently, while in the Baltics and Poland, the memorials for the Russian and Soviet soldiers are being removed, in the Balkans, they are being built and renovated. This is yet another sign of the rift between the pro-Atlanticist and pro-Continental EU member states mentioned above.

Some analysts connect Pahor’s apparent friendliness toward Putin and the Russian leadership in general to his youthful membership in the Yugoslav Communist party. Couldn’t he have been “turned” by the KGB as an ambitious young Communist politician in the late 1980s? This, in my opinion, is not a likely scenario. Pahor was one of the most fervent advocates for the Slovenian membership in NATO to the point of alienating even some members of his own Social-Democratic party. After Slovenia entered NATO in 2004, he has continued to campaign heavily for NATO membership of the rest of the ex-Yugoslav republics. [6] In addition, Slovenia and Island were the first two countries to ratify NATO protocol with Montenegro on June 8, 2016. [7] Therefore, it is unlikely that Pahor is a Russian agent of influence. What is closer to the truth is that he is a pragmatic politician on a mission assigned to him by more powerful Western allies (in this case, the German chancellor Angela Merkel).

A Slovene U.N. Secretary General?

In addition to that, there is another reason why Slovenia would want discrete Russian support. The Slovenian media reported that one of the political luminaries at the Vršič Russian chapel event was Danilo Türk, former president and current Slovenian candidate for the post of the U.N. secretary general. As I have already written in January 2016, Türk, who has had extensive diplomatic experience in the U.N., first as the Slovene ambassador (1992-2000) and then as the assistant secretary general for political affairs (2000-2005) has a great chance of being chosen for that post. [8] In order to do so, he needs at least the tacit, if not the public, approval of all five Security Council members who hold the power of the veto. I have stated that I believe that Türk has already gained the support of China. The support of Russia, which I am sure Pahor lobbied for, would mean that Türk could get ahead of the other candidates who appear much more polarizing in their political and geopolitical outlook.

All in all, Putin’s visit to Slovenia, following on the heels of his recent visit to Greece, another Balkan EU and NATO member state, shows that Russia is far from being politically isolated in the Balkans. On the contrary, in fact, it seems as if its influence is slowly but surely taking on more and more weight. It is only a matter of time before we see the resurgence of Russian-sponsored large economic projects in the region, such as the South Stream, for instance. However, one thing we can already be sure of. The response of the other side will not be long in coming.

]]>Open Letter to U.S. Senators: Four Reasons Why Not To Approve NATO Protocol with Montenegrohttps://geopoliticskovacevic.blogactiv.eu/2016/06/29/open-letter-to-u-s-senators-four-reasons-why-not-to-approve-nato-protocol-with-montenegro/
Wed, 29 Jun 2016 07:29:21 +0000http://geopoliticskovacevic.blogactiv.eu/?p=155» read more]]>On May 19, 2016, 28 NATO foreign ministers, including the U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, signed the accession protocol with Montenegro in Brussels. In order for Montenegro to be admitted, all NATO member states must ratify the protocol. Since this is a treaty document, the U.S. Senate has to approve it by a two-thirds vote.Here are four reasons why the green light should not be given.1. Montenegro is not a democracy. Since 1989 and the end of Communism in East-Central Europe, Montenegro has been ruled by one political party – Democratic Party of Socialists – and its leader Milo Djukanovic. Djukanovic has used the state power and resources to enrich himself and his loyalists. He frequently sports watches worth more than his annual salary. Furthermore, the parliamentary and presidential elections have been rigged and the political opponents harassed and discriminated against. There have been several high-level political murders which have never been solved.2. The majority of Montenegrin citizens are against NATO membership. There are many reasons for this, ranging from the devastation wrought by NATO bombs in 1999 and the violations of international law which preceded it to the historical and religious ties with Russia. The Montenegrin government disputes this fact, claiming that it does have a clear majority support, but at the same time is unwilling to organize a national referendum. If the government leadership is so certain, why doesn’t it let the people have the final say? This would be democratic, would it not? But, alas, Montenegro is not a democracy.3. NATO membership will destabilize Montenegro internally. It is already apparent that the Montenegrin political scene is split into two antagonistic camps. The opponents of NATO will not take lightly the effort to push Montenegro into NATO without a national referendum. The country is on the brink of conflict and it may take very little to spark violence with tragic consequences. Recall what happened in Ukraine when it was forced to choose the sides. Montenegro is no different.4.Montenegro’s NATO membership will be costly for the U.S. both financially and strategically. In terms of the medium- and long-term strategy, the U.S. may lose more than it gains by taking Montenegro into NATO. First, it will make necessary the raising of the U.S. military budget and the percentage the U.S. has to contribute to the common NATO budget. Secondly, it will upset the traditional balance of power in the Balkans as the U.S-Russia relations will deteriorate even further. Why provoke Russia when it could be a U.S. partner on many global issues, especially the serious threats of terrorism and extremism all across the Middle East and Eurasia? Why re-create the conditions in the Balkans which led to the outbreak of the World War I?

]]>The Alliance of Neutral States (ANS): Putin’s Anti-NATO Grand Design for the Balkanshttps://geopoliticskovacevic.blogactiv.eu/2016/05/23/the-alliance-of-neutral-states-ans-putins-anti-nato-grand-design-for-the-balkans/
Mon, 23 May 2016 03:47:18 +0000http://geopoliticskovacevic.blogactiv.eu/?p=151» read more]]>For about two decades, it appeared that the end of the Cold War in Europe left the Balkan states with no long-term geostrategic option except the so-called Euro-Atlantic integrations underwritten by the ideology known as Atlanticism. This option reached the peak of its strength after NATO’s military intervention in the Bosnian conflict in 1995 (which was its first out-of-area military operation since the founding in 1949) and NATO’s 78-day long war against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999. More covertly, NATO forces also intervened in the Macedonian-Albanian conflict in 2001.

As the result of these offensive military undertakings, Bosnia and Kosovo essentially became NATO protectorates with the civilian administrations being supervised by the EU, while the U.S. military bases and auxiliary facilities were quickly established in both. In addition, Slovenia, Bulgaria, and Romania became the members of NATO in 2004 and Croatia and Albania in 2009. All remaining Balkan states, surrounded by NATO members from all sides, rapidly developed close military and intelligence linkages with NATO headquarters in Brussels. This process was greatly helped by the fact that the ruling political elites in these states, except to some extent in Serbia and the Serb Republic (a political subunit within Bosnia), openly acted as NATO’s agents of influence and advocated membership, even though this contradicted the political will of the majority of the population.

These Balkan political elites have been allowed to compensate for the obvious lack of internal democratic legitimacy by the endless praise from the high-level officials in Brussels, Berlin, Paris, London, and Washington, DC. Organized crime, corruption, lawless privatizations, massive unemployment, widespread poverty and hopelessness have simply been swept under the rug. The typically loud defenders of human rights and the rule of law have looked the other way. Evidently, the Atlanticist end justified all and any “dirty” means. Geography trumped democracy.

The Progressive Resistance

It is true that even during this period there were political forces which advocated alternative scenarios, mostly based on the Titoist policy of non-alignment and the “third way” in international affairs. However, their activities were constantly being subverted by the well-oiled, imported NATO propaganda machinery in the government, in the media, and in the non-governmental sector. Their members were generally young people who were enthusiastic, honest and genuinely committed to the public good, but were plagued by the lack of funding and faced with frequent media blackout and open discrimination. Nonetheless, their programs articulated the most promising and humane geopolitical vision for the Balkans. They conceptualized the Balkans as a territorial bridge between the West and the East rather than as the place of persistent confrontation, or the “line of fire” as formulated by the U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in 2015.[1] They wanted the Balkans to become a force for peace and human dignity in the world.[2] Their vision still remains the best option for the Balkan peoples.

However, even though these progressive groups still continue to be active with no less enthusiasm than before, they are being increasingly superseded in their anti-NATO efforts by the revival of the once vanquished (and left for dead) U.S. Cold War opponent. Since the beginning of conflict in Ukraine in early 2014, Putin’s administration has returned to the Balkans with political force and funding not seen since the days of the tsar Nicholas II.

Enter Putin (in the footsteps of Nicholas II)

It is worth remembering that in summer 1914 Nicholas II entered what came to be known as the WWI in order to protect Serbia and the Serbian people from the Austro-Hungarian invasion. Some political circles in both Russia and Serbia understand the decades-long NATO’s military activities in the very same historical key, especially with regard to the status of Kosovo. While the possibility that history will repeat itself in this respect is, thankfully, still far remote, it cannot be denied that recent developments go a long way in creating the ominous atmosphere for the eruption of localized violence in the near future.

These developments all relate to the declining popularity of the Atlanticist geopolitical narrative in the Balkans and the foremost among them is the public articulation of a new Balkan grand design by the Putin administration. Just as the fundamental component of the U.S. grand design for the Balkans is its eventual full integration into NATO, Russia has now articulated a clear and precise counter-design. Instead of joining NATO, the remaining non-NATO Balkan states (Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia, and Macedonia) are to form the alliance of neutral states (ANS).

The Lovćen declaration

What the ANS means in practice can best understood if we examine the first formal document in which it has been articulated. This so-called Lovćen declaration was signed by the representatives of the United Russia party (founded by Putin and currently chaired by the Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev) and the Montenegrin opposition party Democratic People’s Party in the historically significant Montenegrin village of Njeguši on May 6, 2016.[3]

Njeguši is the birthplace of the Montenegrin royal dynasty of Petrović-Njegoš which ruled over Montenegro for more than 200 years and developed very close political and family ties with the long-ruling Russian dynasty of Romanovs. Moreover, the declaration was signed in the house in which one of the most famous rulers of the dynasty, Petar II, known as the Montenegrin Shakespeare, was born. The name of the declaration also has an important historical connotation as it comes from the nearby mountain Lovćen on the top of which the Petar II’s mausoleum is located.

One of the most powerful political figures in Montenegro, the metropolitan Amfilohije, the chief bishop of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Montenegro, was present at the signing and gave his blessing. Though in the past Amfilohije has been known to support the authoritarian and pro-NATO prime minister Milo Djukanović around the election time, he has always publicly opposed NATO membership and has given fiery speeches on its “evil nature” to the point of accusing NATO for continuing Hitler’s anti-Slavic project.[4]

Even more importantly, Amfilohije’s involvement with the Lovćen declaration reveals one of the fundamental components of Putin’s overall geopolitical plan – the nurturing and intensification of the religious Christian Orthodox connection between the Russians and the Orthodox peoples of the Balkans. This includes not only the Serbs, Montenegrins and Macedonians, but also the Greeks and Bulgarians whose states are in NATO and whose religious “awakening” can easily subvert NATO from the inside. The strength of this connection and its future implications have seriously been underestimated by the Atlanticist circles. There are clear indications that these circles have been taken by surprise and now, in their first reactions, seek to minimize the importance of Putin’s ANS efforts.

The Atlanticist response

For example, the journalist Gennady Sysoev, Balkan correspondent for the Russian newspaper Kommersant, who is known in Montenegro for his NATO-friendly commentaries, claims that Putin’s undertaking is bound to end in failure because the partners of the United Russia in the Balkans are in the political opposition and the ANS goes against the officially proclaimed policies of the Montenegrin and other Balkan governments.[5] However, Sysoev is intentionally silent on the fact that, given the present political instability in Montenegro, Bosnia, and Macedonia, the United Russia’s political partners, which, it is true, are now in the opposition, might be able to come to power at some point in the not too distant future. Indeed, they have entered the partnership with Russia’s ruling political party precisely because they intend not to be the opposition any longer and expect financial and logistical help from Putin in their electoral political activities. They will hardly be disappointed. The Lovćen declaration spells out in detail all aspects of political, economic, and social relations in which the Russian support will be forthcoming.

The NATO-controlled media in Montenegro quickly seized on Sysoev’s article and summarized it under the title “Putin’s party relies on marginal figures.”[6] The speed of translation and publication suggest the high degree of coordination. However, the title of the article is misleading because the very same method has been used by the U.S. and NATO intelligence services to control the governments of East-Central European states since the collapse of communism. Countless small parties with just a handful of parliamentary deputies were formed with the money coming from the various “black budgets” with the task of entering the governing coalition and then steering the entire government in the direction charted by their foreign founders and mentors. These parties have had minimal public legitimacy, but have made a great political impact with their “blackmail” potential. As they also don’t cost very much, the CIA, the MI6, and the BND regularly create them for every new election cycle.

Now the Russians (primarily, the SVR and the GRU) are using the same rulebook for their own geopolitical interests. In addition, however, Putin’s grand design for the Balkans embodied in the ANS is also likely to prove durable not only because it builds on the traditional cultural and religious ties linking Russia and the Balkans, but also because it rides on the wave of the enormous present popular dissatisfaction with the neoliberal Atlanticist political and economic status quo.

NOTES

[1] http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=5a7_1425064348 ; See also my previous BFP article on the destabilization factors in the Balkans, http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2015/03/03/bfp-exclusive-who-is-trying-to-destabilize-the-balkans/

[2] Consider for instance the activities of the Movement for Neutrality of Montenegro and similar organizations across the ex-Yugoslav political space, http://mnmne.org/